HIS21330 Global Asia

Academic Year 2024/2025

This course introduces Asia’s quest for nation-building and global modernity to students without prior knowledge of the region and its people. How did Asia since the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries pursue modernity on national and global levels? How and why did those pursuits connect Asian societies and states to the wider world?
What motivated Asians to situate themselves within worlds beyond than the family, the village, the city, the nation, the empire or the region? What were the professional channels that connected the emergence of modern Asia to developments overseas?
Themes involve systematic comparisons of a wide array of nation-building programs in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and India. Case studies include how Asian pioneers such as Sun Yat-sen, Ho Chi Minh and many others embraced global connections as a necessity for their professional work, their personal identities and their political causes. Thinking through global Asia since the 1870s ranges across social history, cultural history, political history, economic history, the history of religions, the history of mobility, institutional history and global history.
The course will feature classic readings on these topics as well as brand new publications.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

-a sensibility toward social and cultural differences between Atlantic and Asian societies & legacies
-the skill set to distinguish across time, place and scale. Asia never was one and the same.
-a understanding of how Asian modernisations affected individual lives, group identities and international aspirations
-an appreciation of how the long global past continues to shape Asia and supplements living memory

Indicative Module Content:

Our module will explore and cover by week:
1) Values and the state in modern Asia
2) Confucianism, hierarchies and Asian cultures of advancement
3) For the nation’s sake: self-cultivation and the politics of progress
4) Universities as drivers of modernity in Asia
5) Still imperialism or already internationalism? Modern professions and a changing Asia
6) Frying pan into the fire? Postgraduates in wartime
7) Global impact: Asian pioneers abroad
8) Technologies of the ascendant state: science, engineering, industry
9) Law for Asia and the World
10) Teaching America about Asia
11) Ambition for what? Generational history and Asia’s knowledge of the world

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

11
Seminar (or Webinar)

10
Specified Learning Activities

45
Autonomous Student Learning

45
Total

111
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
This module combines large-group and small-group teaching, through a weekly
lecture and seminar. Weekly lectures provide overviews of weekly topics, with focus
upon key historical trends, debates and events of Global Asia. Weekly seminars focus on small-group active learning using both secondary and primary sources related to the
weekly topic covered in the lecture. Autonomous learning is nurtured through
required preparatory reading each week, a continuous learning journal, a midterm essay analysing a primary source and an final essay. Key research, writing and citation skills are explicitly incorporated into seminar work and are assessed and advanced from the formative (midterm) to the summative (final) assignments.
 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment(Including Essay): Final essay: 2,000 words, excluding footnotes + bibliography, addressing one of two analytic questions that address a major historical development explored across several weeks of the module. n/a Graded No

40
Participation in Learning Activities: Students are graded on their contribution to seminars throughout the
semester: A = consistent, well-informed contributions throughout semester. B = periodic, well-informed contributions to seminars.		 n/a Graded No

20
Assignment(Including Essay): Document analysis of primary source,
1,000 words, excluding footnotes + bibliography, applying close reading skills, analytic rigor and contextual interpretation.
 n/a Graded No

40

Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Summer No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Feedback on the 1,500 Essay Assignment will be given in writing. Feedback on Participation is given to the class throughout the trimester. Written and oral feedback will be provided on an ongoing basis on preparatory plans and primary and secondary source bibliographies for end-of-semester Research Project Assignments. Feedback on the end-of-semester Research Project Assignment will be given in writing, covering empirical, methodological and conceptual rigor and originality vis-à-vis the historiography.